Peace in Peaceless Times

Where in this world can we find peace? 

If we look into a newspaper or turn on the television or the radio, we are presented with mega-conflicts that have been hot for years and decades, if not for whole centuries. We are aware that only a limited set of conflicts is thus being presented to us: that apart from the “official”, CNN-compatible global issues there are in fact many more, which do not make the headlines for lack of lobbying.

That is the large world of conflict; then there is a smaller world made up of all the different areas of human life, in which fights, envy, hate, etc., are nothing out of the ordinary. At times, when one field of human interrelations seems in perfect harmony, a fight may suddenly break out at another place; and if at one moment all seems placid and peaceful, the next may bring an explosion scattering things in all directions.

Inner life is hardly different. One time we feel good and in tune with ourselves, at another a fight will break out within and we will tense up or suffer physically or emotionally. We will quarrel with a sore part of the body, a painful thought, unimplemented plans, or unsatisfied needs.

What such experiences can show us is that all these conflicts are connected and that one may intensify the other. Inner indispositions tend to take their toll on relationships; tensed up relationships may be disturbing to larger networks of relations; and these will in turn influence mentalities and cultural patterns. Thus, there are connections between a lot of things if not everything.

How can we find peace when there is so much trouble in the world? Does that even make any sense at all? Shouldn’t we instead rage against all this cruelty and injustice? Wouldn’t it simply be hypocritical and ostrich-like to seek inner peace while the world is sinking into chaos? Is that what you call peace, sitting in your ivory tower, your castle in the sky, on your illusionary island of the blessed? How can you still write poems after Auschwitz, Theodor W. Adorno would ask.

Only when we have established peace everywhere will there be peace in individual cases, as the sceptic will have it. To quote once more Adorno: “Wrong life cannot be lived rightly”. However, if nothing is right before all that is wrong has been gotten rid of, we can hardly hope for the right life to come anytime soon. If we insist that peace is possible only after all strife has ended, we will become obsessed with an idée fixe. We will wait for absolute peace, for a perfect world to come. We will act as if it were possible, if only at a much later date, and as if nothing were possible before that time arrived.

Yet absolute peace is the offspring of human thought, and it would be wrong to perceive it as some kind of entity for us to behold one day. Instead, it should be sufficient to think of it as the “regulative idea” of Immanuel Kant: something to aim at, something that will not let us rest before we haven’t realized it.   

We must not abandon or water down the idea of eternal or absolute peace, but we should not misuse it either, by despairing of progress. We might experience it as a kind of tension that does not paralyse but strengthen us, encouraging us to move on: like a power that manifests itself in the urge of the evolution of consciousness onwards. 

We should try everything to again and again connect with this power; it is the power of life itself that wants to lead us onwards. It is down to us to create contact and cause exchange between this flow of life and a particular point within the vast network, a place that we take a very unique and personal approach to, as it is our own self. It is there we can allow peace to spring forth and grow, so that it may expand and spread, becoming tempting and infectious.      

           

In the midst of trouble, as can be seen on the photo, showing a cellist performing in Sarajewo’s city library, which has been wrecked by bombing. He represents what no war can destroy: the vibration and spirit of humanity in sweet harmony with eternity and the beauty of the Great Beyond. This kind of peace is gentle and soft, easily drowned out by clamour and fearful confusion yet consistent and indestructible, being seated deep down below all that which can be troubled.     

(Translation Michael Ehrmann)